London Calling (54 page)

But, as Deyan Sudjic, now director of the Design Museum but then sixteen years old and one of the schoolkid editors, wrote:
‘Everybody knows that children are dirty-minded little beasts’, and what they produced was enough to give Mary Whitehouse
a conniption, that is if she ever saw any of the things she objected to. The magazine contained a cartoon that both ridiculed
and sexualized Rupert Bear, that symbol of middle England that had run, a panel a day, in the
Daily Express
ever since 1920. Virtually every child in England received a
Rupert Annual
at Christmas. He was a part of the national psyche. To give Rupert a penis was worse than suggesting that the Queen had a
sex life. The characters in the Rupert cartoons are anatomically bizarre: the badger, the pug, the bear, are all the same
shape as little boys only with animal heads. To paste Rupert’s head on to one of Robert Crumb’s more extravagantly endowed
characters was truly shocking.

On 8 June 1970, Detective Sergeant Fred Luff and his dirty squad boys raided
Oz
magazine’s office at 52 Princedale Road under the Obscene Publications Act, with a simultaneous raid on the premises of Moore-Harness,
Oz
’s distributor. That issue had been very popular, having rather more sexual images than usual, and the police could only find
500 copies of the magazine to seize. They took all the subscription files, correspondence, advertising folders and so on.
When it finally came, the charge was ‘Conspiracy to produce a magazine containing diverse obscene, lewd, indecent and sexually
perverted articles, cartoons, drawings and illustrations with intent thereby to debauch and corrupt the morals of children
and young persons within the Realm and to arouse and implant in these minds lustful and perverted desires.’ Richard Neville,
Felix Dennis, Jim Anderson and their staff began to prepare for an expensive court case.

On 30 October 1970 the three editors appeared in court dressed in short schoolboy trousers and school blazers, carrying satchels
and caps. The public gallery found this hilarious; the police were aghast; the officers of the court
studiously ignored their attire. All representatives from the underground press were cleared from the public galleries on
the grounds that they didn’t possess sufficient credentials, leaving a bunch of tired Fleet Street hacks whose reporting on
the case was spectacularly poor. The defendants were granted bail only over police objections. The case was set to open at
the Old Bailey the following February, though after several adjournments, it did not in fact get underway until 23 June 1971.
The application by the defendants to get the trial moved to the Tower of London was rejected.

In the middle of the morning of 18 December 1970, the phones at
Oz
went suddenly dead. The newly promoted Detective Inspector Luff, as he was now, arrived once more with a mob of dirty squad
police, ordered the staff not to leave the building, then left to take a second platoon to raid the offices of
Ink
, the new newspaper that Richard Neville and others intended to publish later that year, but which had not yet hit the streets.
The staff of
Ink
were also ordered not to leave the building though they could not possibly have published anything obscene as they hadn’t
published anything at all yet. Next Luff, accompanied by eight plain-clothes policemen and two police sniffer dogs, raided
Richard Neville’s flat on Palace Garden Terrace, where they arrested him and Louise Ferrier for cannabis – that was why the
dogs were there. They ransacked the flat, removing personal papers and correspondence, back issues of
Oz
, the cassette player on which Richard was recording the raid, and a few sex aids and books, including a copy of
Portnoy
’
s Complaint
. Then he raided Felix Dennis and Jim Anderson, where Luff confiscated the artwork and articles for the next issue. Their
tactics were redolent of the Gestapo.

With everyone rounded up, Luff now returned to Princedale Road and yet again removed everything from the
Oz
office, including distribution, advertising and subscription files and more than 4,000 back issues. This was the third set
of subscription lists and advertising files they had seized. This time Luff even took the file cabinet itself that they were
housed in. It was a good start to the new decade. Luff had carefully timed his raid for the Friday before Christmas. Knowing
that the only court open on Saturday would be the West London court of notorious ‘mad’ Justice Melford Stevenson, the magistrate
with the hardest attitude towards drugs in the whole of London. Luff ’s mean-spirited plan was to get the
Oz
editorial team charged under the Obscene Publications Act and in jail for the Christmas recess for ‘continuing to publish
obscene materials’ even though the first trial had not yet reached the Old Bailey. It did not work; the court overruled the
police objections to bail for both Felix and Jim, but Richard was remanded in custody on the pot
charge, even though it was his first offence. Someone managed to scream ‘fascist bastard’ at the judge before the court was
closed and everyone thrown out. The only reason Richard was not in jail for Christmas was that Stevenson was so crazed and
prejudiced that he refused to even hear the defence’s application for bail and Neville’s lawyer was therefore able to contact
a sympathetic judge in chambers who released him on bail the following day.
³
Nonetheless Luff managed to spoil many people’s Christmas celebrations, which was his intention.

The Metropolitan Police had arrested 2,807 people on drugs charges in 1969, up a third on 1968, so they had a high target
to better. Of course, irritating as all this harassment was, it was nothing compared to that experienced by young black people;
whereas a hippy might be stopped and searched on the street once every week or so, one Trinidadian friend of mine was stopped
seventeen times in one week in Notting Hill and said that was not abnormal.

In 1971 it was still a legal requirement that all jurors had to own property, effectively making them middle class and older
than the defendants; none of the
Oz
jury was under forty and many were much older. Judge Argyle was a laughable stereotype of a crusty, old-fashioned, Tory establishment
figure, known for his severe sentencing, whose palpable dislike of
Oz
, the defendants, their ideas, their haircuts and everything they stood for would have been hilarious except that he had the
power to jail them all for many years; and was obviously determined to do so. The
Oz
Three decided that if the establishment wanted a battle with them, it would be fought on their terms: the pompous bogus respectability
of court was shattered by the defendants turning up in bizarre costumes and by calling a number of celebrity defence witnesses
who provoked and poked fun. John Mortimer, their barrister, commented: ‘The more like a circus it got, the better. If people
laugh, your clients are more likely to get off.’ While the Friends of Oz cavorted outside with banners and balloons, and organized
marches, one of which was led by John Lennon, inside the court was entertained by the comedian Marty Feldman, who spoke so
rapidly that the court stenographer couldn’t keep up and he had to be tape recorded. ‘I don’t suppose it matters, but I cannot
hear the witness,’ complained Judge Argyle. ‘Am I speaking loud enough for you now?’ Feldman yelled. ‘Or am I waking you up’,
and commented: ‘He wasn’t listening anyway.’

The funniest witness was George Melly, who was asked by Richard Neville – who was conducting his own defence – to define ‘cunnilingus’,
which the judge was pronouncing as ‘cunnilinctus’. ‘Gobbling, going down, sucking
off,’ said Melly helpfully. ‘Or as we used to call it in the Navy, “yodelling in the canyon”.’ A parade of experts took the
stand, but the judge appeared to sleep through them all. At one point, when the address of
Oz
’s printer on Buckingham Palace Road was discussed, Judge Argyle shook himself and complained: ‘Can’t we leave the Royal Family
out of this case?’ The trial lasted six weeks, taking twenty-six days in court, the longest obscenity trial ever. There were
well-argued statements from reputable witnesses, but the essence of the case remained simple: did the three editors ‘conspire
to corrupt public morals by publishing something obscene’. It was the definition of ‘obscene’ that caused the problems and
it was here that the judge blatantly misled the jury.

After two and half hours, the jury requested a further definition of ‘obscene’. Visibly annoyed, Argyle read aloud from the
Shorter Oxford Dictionary
: ‘Repulsive. Filthy. Loathsome. Indecent. Or lewd. Or any one of those things.’ What he did not say was the dictionary went
on to say that ‘Repulsive, filthy and loathsome’ were archaic meanings of ‘obscene’, which left only ‘indecent’ and ‘lewd’,
but the same dictionary defined ‘lewd’ as ‘indecent’, which, as the court had already agreed, was a matter of opinion. Eventually
the jury threw out the conspiracy charge but found them guilty on a majority verdict of 10–1 of publishing an obscene article
and of sending it through the mail. Argyle decided to hold the three of them in custody pending interviews by the probation
office and until full prison medical, psychiatric and social reports had been prepared.

Their barrister, John Mortimer, immediately objected, saying it was in- human to keep them in suspense before sentencing.
But Argyle was inhuman, and must have known that the appeal court would condemn his biased summing up and directions to the
jury so that unless they served some time in prison now, they never would. It was for this reason that he also instructed
that his directions to the jury should not be tape recorded, only taken down by the court stenographer. This way an appeal
would have to wait months before getting a complete court transcript, during which time the defendants would be in jail. It
must have given him great satisfaction to know that as soon as they arrived at Wandsworth Prison they were forcibly shorn
of their long hair. On 5 August, after they had spent eight nights in jail, Argyle deigned to give his sentences: Richard
Neville, fifteen months in prison and recommended for deportation; Jim Anderson, twelve months in prison; Felix Dennis, nine
months in prison.

Lord Soper thought the verdict was right but the sentence ‘savage’. John Lennon simply called it ‘disgusting fascism’. John
Trevelyan, the former film
censor, said: ‘I think the sentences are much too severe in relation to the offence.’ John Braine, former Angry Young Man:
‘I don’t see why these people should be singled out for this severe treatment.’ The National Council for Civil Liberties said:
‘The sentences are savage and vindictive.’ Kenneth Tynan thought: ‘Obviously battle has been joined between Judge Argyle’s
England and a free England. Mr. Neville and his companions are the first prisoners of war.’ Colin MacInnes commented: ‘By
younger generations the trial will be seen as yet another proof of their elders’ mistrust and dislike of them, which they
will increasingly reciprocate.’
⁴
Seventeen Labour MPs tabled a motion in the House.

Up until this point, the public, led by the right-wing tabloids, had been against the defendants but the severity of the sentences,
for such a trivial offence, provoked a sea change. Richard Neville:

I think people on the whole were against us. I mean, we represented long-haired, dope-smoking, anti-establishment wackos,
and we were Australians to boot – at least, two of us were. But I think that after the judge sent us to jail before we were
actually sentenced and ordered our hair to be cut, this wonderful kind of British sense of fair play came into motion, and,
almost overnight, they switched. And, suddenly, from being kind of deadbeat criminals, we became, you know, potential martyrs.
⁵

After initially welcoming the sentences, the right-wing press now ran headlines like: ‘Fury over Oz Jailings. Angry MPs Join
the Wave of Protest’ (the
Sun
); ‘Storm over Oz Sentences’ (
Daily Mail
); ‘Fury As Three Editors are Jailed’ (
Daily Mirror
); ‘Outcry As Oz Editors are Jailed. Labour MPs Attack “Act of Revenge”’ (
Daily Telegraph
) – it wouldn’t do to be out of step with the public mood. It had also finally dawned on Fleet Street editors that, as Felix
Dennis remarked: ‘they thought it was us first and them next. If they managed to put us away for publishing a magazine, next
it would be the
Guardian
.’
⁶

Then, in an almost unprecedented move, after a total of twelve days in prison, the three were released pending appeal. This
extremely unusual step was undoubtedly as a result of the huge public outcry at the draconian sentencing. When the case finally
reached the Appeal Court, Lord Widgery, Appeal Court Chief Justice, reversed their convictions and dismissed their sentences.
Richard’s deportation order was also cancelled; the three justices taking less than fifteen minutes to reach a decision. They
did uphold the guilty verdict under the Post Office Act for sending ‘Obscene and Indecent’ material through the mails. On
this they suspended the defendants’ six-month
jail sentences for two years. Lord Widgery said that the original trial judge, Michael Argyle, had made ‘a very substantial
and serious misdirection’ of the jury by giving them the dictionary meaning of the word ‘obscene’ rather than the legal one.
He also stated that Argyle ‘found time far too often to have a dig at the witnesses and to say something derogatory about
them…’ The £1,000 fine against Oz Ink Ltd was reduced to £100 and their court costs reduced from £1,200 to £50. The appeal
hearing lasted three days, the first day of which the defendants wore long wigs, a reference to the days before their hair
was forcibly shorn in Wandsworth prison and to the phoney long hair worn by the judges. The decision established a precedent
for obscenity in magazines, that the articles must be judged separately but if one of them is obscene, so is the magazine.